Part 2 (1/2)

”Neither am I,” Jack agreed, ”so far as they are concerned. But just how about us? We've got to get out.”

”Why?”

Jack turned his full blue eyes on me with a sort of pity. ”Do you think Marjorie is going to play second fiddle to a new mother? You don't know your sister, Frank.”

In a moment I knew he was right. He had not asked me if I thought that Jack would play second fiddle to a new father, but that, too, may have been in his mind.

”Well, what are we to do about it?”

”Go west!” he said, emphatically. ”Go west! I am beginning to think it's the only thing for a young fellow to do, anyway. What is there here for us? Drudge away in the mill, seven to six, seven to six, seven to six, seven to six, week in, month in, year in; then, some day, caught on a shaft, and they stop the mill just long enough to untangle your remains.

And that is life! By G.o.d, Frank, it's _not_ life--as I see it--as I'm going to see it!”

I turned to him in surprise; it was the first time I had heard him use such an expression. His teeth were set; his thin lips were pressed together; his eyes were big and luminous in the twilight; his pose was a picture of resolution, even of defiance. All unknown to me, Jack Lane had become a man, and his exclamation had had more of prayer than of profanity in it.

Presently he continued: ”We can go out to that new country, west of Manitoba, and take up a homestead each. In a few years we will have land enough to make a dozen of these Ontario farms. Others are doing it--so can we. And it won't be so hard for us. The worst thing, usually, is the loneliness; holding it down in a shack, three years or more, all by one's self. But we can get claims beside each other, and, although we'll have to have separate shacks, the girls will keep house for us, so it won't be so bad.”

He had touched on something which had already come into my mind. ”Will the girls go?” I questioned.

”Frank,” he said, and again he seemed to speak from some superior wisdom of his own, ”those girls will go with us anywhere we ask them--anywhere!”

CHAPTER III.

When I laid the proposal before Marjorie, she listened with a complacency which suggested that the idea was not entirely new to her.

”I will go and keep house for you,” she said, frankly, ”if Jack and Jean go too.”

It was Sunday afternoon before I had an opportunity to speak to Jean. We were strolling in secluded paths by the river, with bursts of autumn suns.h.i.+ne falling through a gently rustling canopy of gold and bronze and burnished copper and playing the rich hues of the woodland colors across the radiant ma.s.s of Jean's fair hair. She was seventeen now, and my wondering eyes had of late beheld her trim girlishness giving way to the first entrancing curves of womanhood. Her light step, her grace of motion, her clear, pink skin, her sensitive lips half parted over rows of well-formed teeth, her eyes large and dreamful, all whispered in some vague way in the ears of my boyhood that Jean was not as other girls; whispered of Jean the artist--Jean the idealist! Jean had not gone into the mill with the other girls of her age; she had continued longer at school, and then had taken up the study of music. Among the limbo of personalities which drifts into the bywaters of little towns, she had found, too, an artist; a man apparently of talent, who had sought the seclusion of our little milling centre in Ontario for reasons which were his own. He had immediately recognized the artistic strain in the girl and had bent his own genius to call it forth with no thought of reward other than the joy of seeing it grow.

”You are wonderful, Miss Lane,” he had said, after the first few lessons. ”You have perspective and proportion, which are the greatest things in life.”

”I think I am a very stupid pupil,” Jean had murmured in answer. ”You are very patient with me--and all for nothing.”

”For nothing! You leave me your debtor! You pay me a thousand times! You have given back to me a purpose in life--an excuse for being alive! Ah, Miss Lane, you do not know--yet--how empty a life can be. But you are an artist, and some day you will dip your brush in pain--perhaps in sorrow and regret--and after that you will _paint_. It is the law.”

Jean told me these things that Sunday afternoon, and asked me if I knew what he meant. I did not; but I knew the artist had given Jean an instant's glimpse into life, and it was none the easier for me to suggest the loneliness of a homestead ”somewhere west of Manitoba.”

”Do you think you could dip your brush in--in the Saskatchewan?” I ventured.

She was gazing dreamily across the still river, and in the rich draperies of Autumn which were mirrored at her feet there was no fairer flower than Jean. She was the centre of a painting set against a background of nature's gorgeousness.

”I know,” she said, simply. ”Jack has told me. I will go, if you--and Marjorie--go.”

It seemed to me that the reference to Marjorie came almost as a second thought; at any rate, I flattered myself with that idea.

We had no difficulty in persuading my father and Mrs. Lane to fall in with our ideas; in fact, they accepted our plan with some enthusiasm.

Father even insisted upon selling one of the farms and giving the proceeds to establish ourselves in the West. It was little enough, as we were to learn in due course, but Jack and I had also saved something of our earnings, and during this particular fall and winter we were unusually penurious.

”Nail down every dollar,” said Jack, and we all were busy with our nailing.

We had decided to make no start until the spring; this on the advice of Mr. Edgar Gaines, a young man of the town who had gone west three years before with his worldly belongings in a grain bag, and had returned wearing tailor-made clothes and a horse-shoe tie pin set with something which, in a favorable light, resembled a diamond. He had ”proved up” and sold out, and was living a lordly life on the proceeds--while they lasted.